Tag: amy westerman

Food Review: El Sur in SOMA

I’ve been wanting to try El Sur for a while now, and I finally got to around lunch time on Sunday. Here’s the breakdown:

Environment:

El Sur has a great clean and open space. You walk in and order at the counter, then they bring your food to the table or seat at the bar you choose. Water and cups are available for free at the bar, as well as some sauces you can put in cups to bring to your table. My favorite thing, however, was the fresh flowers cutely vased at each table.

Menu and Food

Their menu is found here on their website. Full of many different Honduran and other Latin American foods that you can’t find in many places around central Arkansas, it was hard to pick! I really wanted to try the fried yucca (I know I love that), pupusas, and the pollo chuco.


However, it was brunch time and I felt like I should try something I can only get once a week there. So, we ordered the Torrejas, Honduran French toasts simmered in syprup from dulce de caña, topped with orange zest and choice of two eggs.

The chorizo and eggs we chose were perfect- flavorful, but not too greasy. You can’t go wrong here. The French toast was plentiful and smelled amazing with citrus. If you like your french toast soggy, you’re going to love this. Unfortunately, I do not. So, this wasn’t my favorite dish and I had big regrets not ordering the Pollo Chuco.

On the specials board, the Salpicon sounded amazing and a lighter dish would help level out our meal of French toast. So, the decision was made.

In all honesty, I was a little disappointed when the dish was placed at my table. It looked pretty bland. However, I poured the sauce it came with over it all, as well as a mild and hot sauce from the front counter and everything was pretty good! There’s a great citrus flavor in the beef, though the texture is more like canned tuna, so it threw me off a little. While I enjoyed this, I was still deeply regretting not getting one of the items on the menu I know will be good, like the pupusas.

Overall, I think I need to give this place a second chance with its most popular dishes rather than trying ones that are only available that day. So, if you’ve had any dish there that I MUST try because it is so good, please comment and let me know!

Food Review: Big Bad Breakfast

Big Bad Breakfast is a new brunch/ breakfast chain found in many other states that finally made its way here to Arkansas. It is in the same building at David’s Burgers at the Markham and Bowman intersection. There’s a great menu here, so let’s check it out!

ENVIRONMENT

I went with five friends to Big Bad Breakfast at 12:15 on a Saturday. The wait was supposed to be 45 minutes, but it was only 30. The restaurant is a decent size, nothing too big or tiny. There’s a bar, plenty of regular tables, tall tables, and booths. The decor is modern and has a lot of “Cathead” decor. It was nice, but pretty noisy.

MENU

Their menu can be found at their site. I love this menu! It has so many great options to choose from. You can start with one of five cocktails, all featuring Cathead vodka, or some house-blended Big Bad Cold Brews, or fresh squeezed juices. (They have oat and almond milk for a dairy-free option with your coffee). The food has everything from traditional breakfast plates, to eggs benedicts, biscuit sandwiches, omelets, shrimp and grits, french toast, pancakes, waffles, salads, or even granola or oatmeal. Yes, there is also a children’s menu. The most unique dishes to me were the Fried Oyster Scramble and the Fried Oyster Caesar salad. We don’t get a lot of friend oyster dishes here in Little Rock! They also have red eye gravy and tomato gravy.

FOOD/DRINK

Vietnamese Big Bad Cold Brew: $4.75 and a large Fresh Squeezed Grapefruit Juice: $5.50

All of our table got waters, with great “Sonic” ice, I may add! My Vietnamese cold brew was delicious, with just the right amount of sweetened condensed milk so it didn’t taste too sweet. My friend’s large grapefruit juice was tasty, but a little smaller than expected for a large. I never saw a small juice come out of the kitchen to compare.

The Jack Benny: $13

Description: Crispy fried hash cake, two poached eggs, sliced ham, wilted spinach, hollandaise, ham powder, and one side.

I LOVE an eggs benedict. I also love a great hash. This was the perfect breakfast for me! The crispy hash brown cake was crisp on the outside and soft inside, and not too greasy. The eggs were perfectly poached. There was plenty of seared ham and just a little spinach. The hollandaise was very good. I just mixed it all up and it made a very large breakfast. (The plates are huge, making the food look smaller than it was.)

I got to choose one side and after seeing others with these massive biscuits, I had to get one. It was the best biscuit I have had around here. They add ground pepper, which is a nice touch. The buttery crust and flavorful middle made a wonderful biscuit. I hardly needed butter. Get. The. Biscuit.

OVERALL

The service was new, but good! We had a lot of questions that our waitress took the time to check for us. Need examples? We wanted to know if there was dairy in the red eye gravy- there is none except for extra butter they add at the end, and they can leave that out.

The menu has something for everyone- vegetarians, pescatarians, gluten-free, dairy-free. All of the food my table got looked great, was BIG, and very tasty! I will definitely be back the next time I want to treat myself to a big, bad breakfast.